Rather than end up in Santiago de Cuba late at night I decided to stop off and visit another town and then catch a bus early the next morning to Santiago de Cuba.

Casa was fairly central and run by a nice family. After checking in started off by eating out at a chinese restaraunt. Though with the exception of a few items on it, the menu didnt look particularly chinese. When looking at the prices was guessing it was in pesos even though some of the stuff had a price of 5 next to it which seemed a bit cheap. In the end though the main thing to give it away was that fact that a beer had a price of 24 and I knew that it was worth only 1 CUC so the menu had to be in pesos.

Ended up having a really nice chicken soup (not really chinese chicken soup but rather more like the soup my mum makes) and some thinly beaten veal

Guess if you know where to eat , and can find a decent restuarant (the hard part), its pretty cheap to eat while dining out. Definately cheaper than eating at some of the casas where meals are 7-10 CUC rather than 2-5 CUC. Only problem with eating out though is finding a decent place to eat since most locals in many places dont seem to do much of it. Found this to be especially true in the smaller towns such as Vinales.

Ended up spending the rest of the day wandering around the town checking out the buildings and watching locals wandering around the streets. Lots of nice buildings around the place, no tourists around and what seemed to be a very lively town. Still gets me how I always see so many locals out on the streets in front of their houses at all hours of the day.

As well as wandering the streets I decided to wander into the local cemetary to check it out. Found lots of large tombs in the place as well as some interesting statues. After a few hours of wandering in was starting to get late so headed back to the casa for a bit.

Decided to head out a bit for the night and saw that there were a lot of people out and about even though it was a week night. Ended up deciding to head to casa Trova where there was a little bit of classical trova music followed by some salsa music. Had a few beers and watched people dancing for a while.

While there observed one old man being escorted by a very young girl and him cracking onto her every once in a while. Also another foriegner who had made local friends and was continuously buying drinks for everyone at the table. Guess hosting the locals is one way of getting into the local culture.